How to stream multi channel DSD

[ssmaudio]

I have an 880. I’ve been playing SACDs through HDMI on it. And I don’t see anywhere in the manual that it converts to PCM. Are you sure?

 

[snakeeyes]

I have an 880. I’ve been playing SACDs through HDMI on it. And I don’t see anywhere in the manual that it converts to PCM. Are you sure?

You mean the Sony X800 is decoding and sending it over HDMI to the 880, right?

You can see on the Yamaha what signal is coming in. It will say DSD if it’s DSD.

It’s also possible to forget to enable DSD on the Sony x800 settings, and in that case, it sends PCM instead of DSD.

 

[ssmaudio]

Yes, the Sony is sending the decoded signal over HDMI to the Yamaha 880. The display on my tv says it’s DSD. see attached.

 

[snakeeyes]

Yes, the Sony is sending the decoded signal over HDMI to the Yamaha 880. The display on my tv says it’s DSD. see attached.

Yep that’s how mine look too. The Sony players decode.

My den is RXA2060 with X800m2

My living room is RXA770 with X700

And my bedroom is RXV681 with X800.

 

[ssmaudio]

So the 880 *does* do native DSD decoding, right?

 

[snakeeyes]

So the 880 *does* do native DSD decoding, right?

Yes a SACD player by definition plays SACDs which are DSD and some of the other Sony regular Blu-ray players are SACD players also. (But not all models)

 

[snakeeyes]

When I look at the back of the 3080, I’m not seeing any 5.1 analog inputs. I just wanted to mention that. Those preouts are not analog inputs.

 

[2channel lover]

Yeah it's a shame that it’s so difficult to play multi ch audio. Don’t know what the music industry is thinking with this approach. There’s quite a lot of multi ch music out there and (especially in classical music) some labels like Pentatone and Channel classics only release in multi ch DSD/FLAC.

I use my Oppo and spin the multi-ch sacd, blu-ray disc. I have ripped some MC sacd discs, but mylaptop based wireless setup is not stable enough even for 2 ch hi res playback, let alone MC files. Eventually I plan on adding an ethernet based music streamer with the expectation of being able to stream MC music.

 

[sterling shoote]

Well here’s something very interesting! I plugged in a usb stick containing multi-ch DSD of a Mendelssohn piano trio into my Sony UBP X800 dvd/SACD player and voilà—it played it in multi channel! The manual doesn’t even state that it can do that. (This is using HDMI transport to my Yamaha RX A880 that supports DSD natively.)

That’s something. At least I have something that I can use. But it doesn’t solve my streaming issue of course, since the user interface is horrendous and it doesn’t fit my couch potato life.

I may still upgrade my receiver to the Yamaha 3080 that has 5.1 analog inputs and use the Exasound DAC + their network streamer with Audirvana on my Mac. Then I have a decent software player with album liner notes, etc. I have a call scheduled with Georg at Exasound tomorrow; see how it goes.

You've discovered what I told you in my earlier post, gapless multi-channel is available from hard drive via usb drive port connection between hard drive and Universal Player, and then from Universal Player to the AVR via HDMI. You can not wirelessly stream multi-channel gaplessly from any DLNA device to Universal Player or AVR.

 

[sterling shoote]

I use my Oppo and spin the multi-ch sacd, blu-ray disc. I have ripped some MC sacd discs, but mylaptop based wireless setup is not stable enough even for 2 ch hi res playback, let alone MC files. Eventually I plan on adding an ethernet based music streamer with the expectation of being able to stream MC music.

The Network connection from your DLNA Laptop to OPPO will carry both stereo and multi-channel but neither gaplessly therefore it's not a practical connection. Instead use usb drive port connection from a hard drive or HDMI connection from computer to OPPO. However, the HDMI connection may not be glitch free on some file types like FLAC. One more thing, all of these means to stereo or multi-channel as you know require powering up the TV as well as making what seems like a multitude of remote control and mouse clicks to fire up a tune. It's so inconvenient that It's turned me off on downloading multi-channel music, opting instead to get it on SACD. When I cannot do that, I send the download to my thumb drive, which gets me gapless playback and only requires about a half dozen steps to fire up whatever tunes I've put onto the thumb drive.

 

[sterling shoote]

Yeah it's a shame that it’s so difficult to play multi ch audio. Don’t know what the music industry is thinking with this approach. There’s quite a lot of multi ch music out there and (especially in classical music) some labels like Pentatone and Channel classics only release in multi ch DSD/FLAC.

What's a shame is the hoops you've got to go through to play multi-channel downloads gaplessly using a wired connection from where ever the download is stored. And, wireless connection from where the files are stored to AVR or Universal Player and then onto AVR are even more complicated; and, none of these DLNA connections do gapless; therefore, are not at all practical for much multi-channel Classical Music. All this complication just to turn on multi-channel turns me off. And then there's the record producers who it appears want to keep us in a stereo world, but that's another story.

 

[2channel lover]

The Network connection from your DLNA Laptop to OPPO will carry both stereo and multi-channel but neither gaplessly therefore it's not a practical connection. Instead use usb drive port connection from a hard drive or HDMI connection from computer to OPPO. However, the HDMI connection may not be glitch free on some file types like FLAC. One more thing, all of these means to stereo or multi-channel as you know require powering up the TV as well as making what seems like a multitude of remote control and mouse clicks to fire up a tune. It's so inconvenient that It's turned me off on downloading multi-channel music, opting instead to get it on SACD. When I cannot do that, I send the download to my thumb drive, which gets me gapless playback and only requires about a half dozen steps to fire up whatever tunes I've put onto the thumb drive.

Thanks...I've been able to connect the laptop to the Oppo205 via USB and playback multi-ch SACDs that I've ripped, but the laptop itself is having issues...it's been to the Geek Squad once this year and they got it off life support and I've been completing my rips with it, but I've decided I'm going away from my laptop based music server altogether.

 

[ssmaudio]

Oh yeah you’re right. My 880 had those pre-amp connections as well. I got it confused with some other receiver. Thanks!
How annoying. I really like their MusicCast implementation and was hoping to stay in their fold.

When I look at the back of the 3080, I’m not seeing any 5.1 analog inputs. I just wanted to mention that. Those preouts are not analog inputs.

 

[ssmaudio]

What's a shame is the hoops you've got to go through to play multi-channel downloads gaplessly using a wired connection from where ever the download is stored. And, wireless connection from where the files are stored to AVR or Universal Player and then onto AVR are even more complicated; and, none of these DLNA connections do gapless; therefore, are not at all practical for much multi-channel Classical Music. All this complication just to turn on multi-channel turns me off. And then there's the record producers who it appears want to keep us in a stereo world, but that's another story.

There’s a very interesting video from Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2016 regarding multi ch is still a novelty. It’s a bit long, but worth the listen.

 

[sterling shoote]

Yes, I watched this video. I love multi-channel primarily for the depth and breadth of it, which can not be realized from stereo. The problem today is enjoyment of multi-channel via download rather than disc. Simply having a Sony Universal Player connected via HDMI to an AVR easily yields gapless stereo and multi-channel pleasure from SACD and Blu-ray with no need for more knowledge than it takes to play a CD; but, from downloading, it requires a 500 level course on Information Technology to get the job done. This makes multi-channel music from download a conundrum, since streaming and downloading is where it's at today. At any rate, so far, the easiest means for multi-channel download playback has been: 1. Download of music in FLAC format from Acoustic Sounds, 2. Save file in Music folder, 3. Send file to Thumb Drive, 4. Insert Thumb Drive to OPPO usb Drive Port, 5. Turn on OPPO, 6. Turn on TV. 7. Turn on Amplification, 8. Using OPPO Remote scroll to Music icon in Main Menu, 9.click Music icon, 10. Click Thumb Drive icon, 11. Click Folders icon, 12. Scroll to desired folder to play, 13. Click Folder icon, 14. Click desired file, 15. Scroll and Click on desired track and wait for device to play. 16. Adjust volume. 17. Keep TV monitor on to start playback of other thumb drive files after selected file ends. OK, that's a lot of stuff right there and there's actually even more actions if I add the details of downloading; yet, this is an easy process compared to attempting to enjoy via other available means. The bottom line is multi-channel discs are the way to go until multi-channel downloads can be as easy to play as stereo from iTunes Library.

 

[ssmaudio]

Yes, I watched this video. I love multi-channel primarily for the depth and breadth of it, which can not be realized from stereo. The problem today is enjoyment of multi-channel via download rather than disc. Simply having a Sony Universal Player connected via HDMI to an AVR easily yields gapless stereo and multi-channel pleasure from SACD and Blu-ray with no need for more knowledge than it takes to play a CD; but, from downloading, it requires a 500 level course on Information Technology to get the job done. This makes multi-channel music from download a conundrum, since streaming and downloading is where it's at today. At any rate, so far, the easiest means for multi-channel download playback has been: 1. Download of music in FLAC format from Acoustic Sounds, 2. Save file in Music folder, 3. Send file to Thumb Drive, 4. Insert Thumb Drive to OPPO usb Drive Port, 5. Turn on OPPO, 6. Turn on TV. 7. Turn on Amplification, 8. Using OPPO Remote scroll to Music icon in Main Menu, 9.click Music icon, 10. Click Thumb Drive icon, 11. Click Folders icon, 12. Scroll to desired folder to play, 13. Click Folder icon, 14. Click desired file, 15. Scroll and Click on desired track and wait for device to play. 16. Adjust volume. 17. Keep TV monitor on to start playback of other thumb drive files after selected file ends. OK, that's a lot of stuff right there and there's actually even more actions if I add the details of downloading; yet, this is an easy process compared to attempting to enjoy via other available means. The bottom line is multi-channel discs are the way to go until multi-channel downloads can be as easy to play as stereo from iTunes Library.

Totally agree on the crap one has to go through. This is why I’m trying to get the streaming thing to work with Audirvana at the front end. Then it’s seamless. Let’s see.

 

[snakeeyes]

I just want more multichannel content. I’m ok with high res PCM too if that helps them bring more multichannel content.

I thought Amazon would bring Atmos Music but if that’s only going to be for that echo studio speaker, that’s just a gimmick. LOL

 

[Pogre]

When I look at the back of the 3080, I’m not seeing any 5.1 analog inputs. I just wanted to mention that. Those preouts are not analog inputs.

I was gonna say... I looked too and didn't see the analog inputs but didn't wanna say anything because I'm not familiar with that model outside of posts I see here.

 

[ssmaudio]

I don’t have high hopes on the Amazon thing. In the other hand, if it makes multi channel more popular, then in all for it. To be honest, in this day and time, there’s very little extra cost to producing multi channel and delivering it. Most recording houses record their masters with multiple tracks anyway.

 

[snakeeyes]

I was gonna say... I looked too and didn't see the analog inputs but didn't wanna say anything because I'm not familiar with that model outside of posts I see here.

Ya I jumped from 2003 gear to 2016 gear a couple years back (for 4K) and it surprised me that analog inputs were not around as much. I think some of the Marantz models might have them still.